In relative terms, no music is “good” or “bad” — it just needs to be heard in an appropriate setting. A cursory listen to the debut album by UK grime diva Nadia Oh might lead one to believe that the “appropriate setting” involves a stack of dollar bills and a pole — but if this is the kind of strip-club banger that will oust Alice Cooper’s “Poison” from the playlist, it really shows how tables have done turned. Hot like Wow has a singular obsession: Ms. Oh’s relentless desire to stalk and mentally undress the boy of her dreams. Aside from the occasional “You know I’m hot,” Nadia is not interested in telling us how her body’s too bootylicious for us. Instead, we get lines like “I bet you look better/With no clothes on” and “I know your name/And I got your number.” This is the male gaze subverted amid a subterfuge of crunk and sleaze, and it fits in with the recent UK trend of women taking the domineering role in courtship. The music combines Middle Eastern Eurovision scuzz with Justice-y distorto-beats, and Nadia’s delivery combines the smutty-yet-bored delivery of Samantha Fox with the up-for-anything naïveté of Stacey Q. It all comes together in what amounts to a naughts-y update of ’70s porn-to-disco one-hit wonder Andrea True Connection.

The new Web geniuses As the Web has evolved, becoming more and more democratized, capable of being customized and used in ever more ways, a funny thing is happening. Wanna be startin' something?: A five-step guide to being a new web millionaire. By Bill Jensen

Hip-hop is dead Depraved hip-hop is the biggest thing to hit trailer-trash America since sliced meds — and not just in redneck pockets, where rap music hardly reached before, but in suburban enclaves where acts like Twiztid and Tech N9ne sell out shows with ease.

Kicking the habits Anyone familiar with Wagner's œuvre with the Raveonettes (who come to the Paradise next Thursday) should be surprised by the idea that, having created something awesome, he's ready to move on to something different.

Hip-hop from Hell Depraved hip-hop is the biggest thing to hit trailer-trash America since sliced meds.

THE STROKES | COMEDOWN MACHINE | March 18, 2013 The Strokes burst out in a post-9/11 musical world with a sound that was compact and airtight, melodies coiled frictionlessly in beats and fuzzed vocals.

GLISS | LANGSOM DANS | February 01, 2013 If rock and roll is three chords and the truth, then the mutant genre offspring shoegaze can be summed up as one chord, three fuzzboxes, and a sullen, muttered bleat.